beyond riot porn

Tonight, we showed Berlusconi's Mousetrap at the Red and Black Cafe. It's a indymedia documentary about the 2001 G8 protests in Genoa. Showing movies is nothing new to me but this movie was something else.

I've seen lots of films that include 'riot porn' (a term I'm not that comfortable with) which could be classified as gratuitous scenes of riots without a lot of context. This documentary had a lot of rioting in it but it had a lot of context as well and it framed mass mobilizations in a way that I haven't really thought of previously. It's interesting because it was made before I saw my first protest. Mass mobilizations are important in the respect that they illustrate collectively that we don't agree with the actions that are being imposed upon us or in our name. However, in the end, it's reactionary and the bottom line is we're gonna put a lot of energy and effort into getting our asses beat down.

Anyway, the new thing was meeting a few new people with fresh perspectives. After our video showings, we generally have a discussion group in order to provide a little more than just showing a movie. Sometimes they go well, sometimes not and then sometimes they outshine the movie. Today may have been the first time we talked about the movie afterwards where it changed the way I looked at the movie. I know about dual power struggle where you build up communities while opposing oppressive systems and I've always thought that mass mobilizations were a necessary part of the latter but it seems that it could be done more effectively. After all, the WTO riots were the exception, not the norm. We've lost the element of surprise so it's time to start working smarter...and harder.